Science & Engineering Department

Department News & Events

New Arrival as of 6/1/2013:

Welcome to RVCC Emilie Stander! Emilie is our new Instructor of Environment Science for the Science and Engineering Department. Below is a short biography of Emilie, if you haven’t gotten a chance to meet Emilie stop by her office! She is located in the Science and Engineering Building in room SC-206.

Emilie Stander is joining the Science and Engineering Department faculty in the fall of 2013 as an Environmental Science instructor. After teaching at RVCC as an adjunct during the 2009-2010 academic year, she was hooked. Emilie grew up not far away in Bridgewater and earned her B.S. degree in Environmental Science from Brown University in 1999. After a couple of years as a lab and field technician in a soil microbial ecology lab in upstate New York and Baltimore, Emilie returned to New Jersey in 2001 to earn her PhD in Ecology and Evolution from Rutgers University. She spent the next six years studying the structure and function of wetlands in northeastern New Jersey, trying to understand the impact of local and regional suburban and urban development on the ability of wetlands to mitigate pollution and improve water quality in streams and groundwater. After finishing her PhD, Emilie worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Urban Watershed Management Branch in Edison, where she worked with a team of engineers and chemists to design, construct and monitor a permeable pavement parking lot and rain garden system designed to infiltrate and treat storm water generated on the EPA campus.

Emilie then joined the Science and Technology Policy Fellows program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Through AAAS’s program Emilie worked as a fellow in the US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Office of Water in Washington, DC for two years, where she provided technical assistance to foreign service officers managing development programs in water, agriculture, climate change, and natural resources in USAID offices around the world, including Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tajikistan, and Jordan. Emilie stayed on for a third year with USAID at its office in Jordan. Emilie worked with the Office of Water Resources and Environment at the US Embassy in Amman, Jordan, where she managed two projects. One project was designed to provide technical assistance from US natural resources and parks managers to their Jordanian counterparts managing key natural and cultural areas in Jordan, including Petra and Wadi Rum. The other project involved the construction of a new training academy designed to be a center of excellence for the Middle East and North Africa region in training nature guides, park managers, and natural resource management professionals. Emilie also assisted in designing a new generation of water and environment programming in Jordan, including efforts to assist the Jordanian government in reducing leaks from Amman’s drinking water distribution system, rationalizing the use of scarce water resources for irrigation of Jordanian agricultural systems, and rehabilitating and restoring arid ecosystems used by Bedouin tribes for grazing herds of sheep and goats. Although Emilie was sad to leave her colleagues in Jordan, she is looking forward to the challenge of teaching Ecology and General Biology at RVCC this fall and working with new colleagues here to provide environmental instruction and curriculum development to the RVCC community.

New Arrival as of 6/1/2014:

Welcome to RVCC Peter Stupak! Peter is our new Instructor, Physics & Engineering for the Science and Engineering Department. Below is a short biography of Peter, if you haven’t gotten a chance to meet Peter stop by his office! He is located in the Science Building, SC-104.

I am very excited and am privileged to join the RVCC Science and Engineering Department as an Instructor of Physics this Fall 2014. After earning a PhD in Engineering in 1992, I spent the next 22 years in the Optical Fiber manufacturing business where I lived and worked in a number of countries including France, Italy, Germany, and Brazil. Most recently I returned from four years of exciting and challenging work for a joint-venture company located near Shanghai, China where we designed, built, and operated a factory to make glass for optical fiber.

Throughout my career I worked with and trained new Engineers in solving process problems, developing professional disciplines, and critical thinking. But it was not until 2007/2008 when I discovered my future career as a teacher while enjoying the opportunity to instruct Physics courses at night as a RVCC adjunct.

It is with great enthusiasm that I begin my new career and look forward to learning about RVCC and meeting and working with RVCC students, faculty, and staff.

Biotechnology Seminars:

These weekly seminars ,part of the Biotechnology Seminar course, are open to the public.Students who may be interested in biotechnology, as a major or as a future interest, will particularly benefit from attending these seminars.

Science Seminars:

Since the Fall 1997semester, thanks to the inspiration and hard work of Professor Emeritus.Darryl Walke, the Department has sponsored a series of weekly Science Seminars during the fall and spring semesters. These talks, which cover a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and mathematics, are presented by faculty at Raritan Valley Community College, as well as by members of the wider academic and scientific community. They provide the substance for the Honors Science Seminar (SCIE-128), but are also open to all interested students, faculty, staff, and members of the public.

Internships for Science, Engineering, &Technology StudentsMany opportunities for Internships, both paid and unpaid, are becoming available for interested students. Please contact Alicia Hermo-Weaver (ahermo-w@raritanval.edu; XT8437). You may also check out the latest opportunities online at Career Services.

Astronomy/Cosmology:

Quantum Mechanics:

Quantum Mechanics at the University of California at San Diego: an excellent resource for undergraduates maintained bythe Squier group at UCSD.

Atomic and Molecular Orbitals: A page which displays calculate delectron density maps for most simple atomic orbitals, from Dr.Craig Counterman and Prof. Donald Sadoway at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Orbital Viewer, maintained by David Manthey, has lots of images and visualizations of atomic orbitals.

Diffraction:

X-Ray Diffraction: From another part of theextensive educational material presented by the Squier group at theUniversity of California at San Diego, this presents useful information and images about X-ray diffraction, with a little electron diffraction thrown in as a bonus.

Electron Holography:An extension of electron diffraction that gives very high resolution of electron densities. This site is presented by Prof.Dr. Hannes Lichte's group at the University of Tuebingen.